Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the second Canadian to be named NBA MVP after Steve Nash earned the award.Nate Billings/The Associated Press
When Steve Nash won his two NBA MVPs in 2005 and 2006, it was a big deal. First, he was Canadian. Second, he beat Shaquille O’Neal in both instances.
In the 20 years since, Mr. O’Neal has only stopped talking about it to draw breath. His bafflement has become one of the longest-running jokes in the NBA. Mr. Nash’s foreignness is the background hum of these conversations.
On Wednesday, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander became the second Canadian to earn the award. No one’s going to talk smack about this one.
Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander received 71 out of 100 first-place votes from media members to secure the award.
When Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander was drafted, his Canadianness may have counted against him. He was taken 11th over all by Charlotte and immediately shipped to the Los Angeles Clippers.
The making of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the NBA’s most valuable player
He made enough of an impression as a rookie that the Oklahoma City Thunder framed their trade of veteran star Paul George around him. It may have been the most one-sided deal in NBA history. At 20, Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander became the centrepiece of the most promising team in the league, though that promise was still years off.
Gilgeous-Alexander led the Oklahoma City Thunder to victory in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday.Nate Billings/The Associated Press
Now 26, his most notable quality is that he does everything as well as or better than anyone else. He shoots, he scores, he penetrates, he defends and he never takes a play off. If basketball embraced the concept of the five-tool player, Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander would be the prototype.
Most importantly, he led the best team in basketball by some distance. The wisdom of the choice was proved in the conference semi-final between Denver and OKC, which featured the MVP, and the runner-up, Nikola Jokic.
Led by Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder took that one in seven games.
Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander is a clichéd Canadian in some ways – more charming than the average sports star, more affable, less affected. He still famously practises in the off-season with all the guys he played ball with as a kid in Hamilton. None of them are particularly good basketball players. Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander just likes their company.
This is what sets your average Canadian NBAer apart. From the moment he showed some promise with a ball in his hands, he wasn’t being told he was the greatest thing on God’s green Earth. It’s why Europeans, Africans and Canadians form their own geographic clique in the NBA. Most still operate like regular people.
Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander has the unusual talent of combining that ordinariness with a sharp sense of personal branding. Companies like him almost as much as coaches do. He already fronts Skims, Canada Goose and Converse. He’s the 42nd-highest-paid athlete in the world, according to Sportico, and underpaid by NBA standards.
Gilgeous-Alexander, his wife Hailey Summers and son Ares Alexander.Nate Billings/The Associated Press
Should he win a championship this year, he will go from the best sub-30 player in the world to one of the most recognized athletes, full stop. The distinction is worth a lot of money – and will cause him a lot of hassle. Everything about his career to this point suggests Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander is equal to it.
But the really remarkable thing is how unremarkable it has become that a Canadian athlete is the best in the world at anything besides hockey.
Growing up, outside of the occasional Winter Olympics or an irregular Canada Cup, this simply wasn’t the case. Canadians did sometimes play football or basketball, but almost never at a high level. The ones who rose up were often holders of a passport who weren’t raised here.
For every Ferguson Jenkins, there were just a few other products of the Canadian amateur system barely getting by in whatever top league they’d snuck into.
If you’re of a certain age, you may remember the thrill you got whenever Montreal’s Bill Wennington was subbed into a Chicago Bulls playoff game. Sure, he only played eight minutes a night and was only there so that Michael Jordan could use him as a human pylon, but he was Canadian.
Opinion: How Shai Gilgeous-Alexander turned a former sportswriter into a fan again
There are a lot of reasons for our lack of national self-confidence. Playing in leagues with the world’s greatest sporting superpower has to be one of them.
For most of our history, we were only allowed in to a) supply them with hockey players and b) buy franchises that would mostly employ Americans. It was the trade deficit before that became a thing.
Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander leads a generation that has moved beyond these limitations. He finished high school in the U.S. and went to the University of Kentucky, but his formative years were spent living and playing in Hamilton. He’s proof that being born and raised in Canada is not an athletic drawback.
The next step: becoming an athletic superpower ourselves.
That’s in the process of happening on an individual athlete basis. Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander just went to the front of that pack. Now we have to put those pieces together on a team. It would require a major, major championship. In a best-case scenario, something stolen from America, in a sport they think they own. The ultimate prize: an Olympic men’s basketball gold.
Gilgeous-Alexander and the Canadian men's basketball team at the 2024 Summer Olympics.Mark J. Terrill/The Associated Press
Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander led the Canadian team in Paris. They had one bad game at the absolute worst moment against the hosts and bombed out. The rest of the Canadian players fled without talking, but Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander stood his ground.
“If you don’t earn it, that’s what happens,” he said.
By the time L.A. 2028 rolls around, Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander will have just turned 30. By then, the Thunder may be a Bulls- or Warriors-style dynasty. If so, Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander will be their Mr. Jordan or Steph Curry.
He could be the most famous athlete in the world, getting ready to pull Canada to the top of the sporting mountain just before a U.S. presidential election.
It’s a lovely thought. It might even happen. If so, the journey didn’t start on Wednesday night, but it did get supercharged then.